20 Films We’re Psyched to See at Sundance Inline
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute1/20Results
Mumblecore graduates from post-college aimlessness to the responsibilities and regrets of Thirtydom. After dabbling in retro mock-doc with 2013’s Computer Chess, Andrew Bujalski returns to the present with Results, centered on a local gym, where a fitness guru, a lonely divorcé, and an sharp-tongued trainer hope to improve—though inevitably complicate—their lives.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute2/20Digging for Fire
The prolific Joe Swanberg (he averages three films a year) follows up on the themes of temptation and domestic ennui he tackled in the underrated Drinking Buddies and last year’s Happy Christmas with Digging for Fire, an ensemble piece led by Rosemarie DeWitt and Jake Johnson as young, distracted parents in L.A.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute3/20Mistress America
Meanwhile in New York, Greta Gerwig has evolved from her rudderless dancer in Frances Ha to a confident cosmopolitan dispensing life lessons to her impressionable stepsister (Lola Kirke) in **Noah Baumbach’**s Mistress America.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute4/20Nasty Baby
Across the river in Brooklyn, Chilean writer-director Sebastián Silva (The Maid, Crystal Fairy) moves in front of the camera, joining TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe in Nasty Baby as a gay couple seeking a surrogate. Though the plot suggests more dramatic territory for Silva, with his mischievous black comedy and Kristen Wiig playing the best friend, there’s sure to be plenty of (uncomfortable) laughs, too.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute5/20Unexpected
Kris Swanberg (who collaborated with husband Joe on films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Alexander the Last) also has babies on the brain: Her third feature, Unexpected, stars _How I Met Your Mother’_s Cobie Smulders as a public school teacher facing both a student’s and her own unplanned pregnancies.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute6/20Sleeping With Other People
Sundance has traditionally been a great supporter of female filmmakers and this year is no exception. After making her name as a quick-fire, take-no-prisoners satirist with 2012’s Bachelorette, Leslye Headland returns with her heavily anticipated follow-up, Sleeping With Other People. Though the premise—a womanizer (Jason Sudeikis) and a serial cheater (Alison Brie) try to keep it platonic—isn’t especially original, Headland’s barbed wit and the film’s first-rate supporting players (Amanda Peet, Adam Scott, Natasha Lyonne) ensure a delightfully acidic spin on the “Can We Be Friends?” genre.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute7/20The Bronze
Melissa Rauch (best known for her role as Bernadette on The Big Bang Theory) writes and stars in The Bronze, about a washed-up Olympic gymnast who suddenly finds herself with an adoring fan. But is she a loyal protégée or a plotting usurper?
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute8/20Stockholm, Pennsylvania
Coming home carries different meaning in **Nikole Beckwith’**s ambitious first feature Stockholm, Pennsylvania, in which Saoirse Ronan portrays a kidnapped young woman reunited with and readjusting to her parents after living for more than a decade with her abductor.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute9/20Strangerland
Missing children are also a part of **Kim Farrant’**s Strangerland, an Australian thriller with Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes as the bewildered parents whose son and daughter mysteriously disappear in a remote desert town.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute10/203 ½ Minutes
On the heels of Trayvon Martin and Ferguson, **Marc Silver’**s 3 ½ Minutes continues the discussion by zeroing in on Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground self-defense laws and the case of Jordan Davis, an unarmed African-American teen shot to death at a gas station in 2012 over a noise complaint. Silver, whose last film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2013, reconstructs Jordan’s story—which unfolded just months after the Martin tragedy—with interviews and courtroom footage.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute11/20The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
As Black History Month approaches, veteran filmmaker **Stanley Nelson’**s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is especially timely. This in-depth portrait of the Panthers offers rare accounts from past members of the movement, whose recollectsions are fleshed out with little-seen archival material and interviews with former FBI informants and opposition. The clothes are good, too.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute12/20The Hunting Ground
Oscar-nominated documentarian Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith, The Invisible War) takes on campus rape in The Hunting Ground, featuring activists Andrea Pino andAnnie Clark, who are courageously waging an uphill battle against the institutional sexism that blames victims instead of their assailants.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute13/20Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
For those who never got around to cracking open **Lawrence Wright’**s 560-page inquiry into Scientology, or the original New Yorker article on which it was based, director Alex Gibney condenses everything you need to know into a two-hour film, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute14/20Prophet’s Prey
Seasoned filmmaker Amy Berg premieres her latest documentary on a different set of believers in Prophet’s Prey, which pulls open the door on fundamentalist, polygamist Mormons and questions how its followers became so dangerously misguided by a rogue leader.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute15/20How to Change the World
The British-Canadian coproduction How to Change the World, an oral history of Greenpeace, arrives right around a time when governments around the globe are finally taking climate change seriously. To witness how one of the most influential environmental organizations on the planet began as a ragtags posse protesting an atomic test site in the sixties, proves that even the smallest movements possess the power to effect change.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute16/20Girlhood
While they share a syllable, the similarities between Richard Linklater’s critically adored 2014 film Boyhood and French director **Céline Sciamma’**s Girlhood end there. Better, then, to consider the latter’s original title, Bande de Filles (Girl Gang), which conjures the fierce friendships formed by young women to survive life in the grim housing projects of Paris’s banlieues. If you’re familiar with Sciamma’s previous efforts (Water Lilies, Tomboy), then expect another sensitive portrait of an outsider (Karidja Touré in a startling feature film debut) unafraid to try on different identities on the road to becoming herself.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute17/20The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Breakout performer Bel Powley conveys all the confusion and excitement that accompanies a young woman’s sexual self-discovery in the seventies San Francisco-set The Diary of a Teenage Girl. In an inventive adaptation of **Phoebe Gloeckner'**s popular graphic novel, Marielle Heller blends live action and animation for her directorial debut.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute18/20Ten Thousand Saints
In Shari Springer Berman and **Robert Pulcini’**s Ten Thousand Saints, the awkward pangs and longings of adolescence are deeply felt by pot-smoking high schooler Jude (Asa Butterfield), who’s uprooted from small-town Vermont to the wilds of New York City to bond with his absent father (Ethan Hawke).
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute19/20Cronies
The precocious talents of Michael J. Larnell—who’s still in film school at NYU—caught the eye of Spike Lee, who took on Larnell as a mentee and executive produced his first feature, the St. Louis–set Cronies. It tells the story of a pair of childhood friends, already drifting apart, whose relationship is tested over a single day when a new, more mature acquaintance shakes things up.
Photo: Courtesy of the Sundance Institute20/20Dope
Another threesome anchors **Rick Famuyiwa’**s Dope, a film about a close-knit crew (played by Shameik Moore, Kiersey Clemons, and _The Grand Budapest Hotel’_s Tony Revolori) that’s socially outcast for trying to stay clear of the drugs and thugs in their neighborhood. Raised in Inglewood, reared on Cosmos, and bent on attending Harvard, Moore’s studious, hip-hop-loving Malcolm is neither an anomaly nor an archetype; he’s simply another high school senior stressed about the SATs—and a refreshing addition to the coming-of-age canon.
